Andrea Söllinger

UiT The Arctic University of Norway · Department of Arctic and Marine Biology

Atmospheric methane oxidizing bacteria (atmMOB) constitute the sole biological sink for atmospheric methane. Still, the physiological basis allowing atmMOB to grow on air is not well understood. Here we assess the ability and strategies of seven methanotrophic species to grow with air as sole energy, carbon, and nitrogen source. Four species, inclu...

Physiological responses of soil microorganisms to global warming are important for soil ecosystem function and the terrestrial carbon cycle. Here, we investigate the effects of weeks, years, and decades of soil warming across seasons and time on the microbial protein biosynthesis machineries (i.e. ribosomes), the most abundant cellular macromolecul...

Atmospheric methane oxidizing bacteria (atmMOB) constitute the sole biological sink for atmospheric methane and have been discovered worldwide over the past decades. Still, insufficient knowledge about the metabolic basis of atmMOB, caused by the lack of pure cultures, limits our ability to manage, study, and exploit the atmospheric methane sink an...

Climatic warming has been hypothesized to accelerate organic matter decomposition by soil microorganisms and thereby enhance carbon (C) release to the atmosphere. However, the long-term consequences of soil warming on belowground biota interactions are poorly understood. Here we investigate how geothermal warming by 6 °C for more than 50 years affe...

Methanotrophs oxidize most of the methane (CH 4) produced in natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. Often living close to soil surfaces, these microorganisms must frequently adjust to temperature change. While many environmental studies have addressed temperature effects on CH 4 oxidation and methanotrophic communities, there is little knowledge abo...

How soil microorganisms respond to global warming is key to infer future soil-climate feedbacks, yet poorly understood. Here, we applied metatranscriptomics to investigate microbial physiological responses to medium-term (8 years) and long-term (>50 years) subarctic grassland soil warming of +6°C. Besides indications for a community-wide up-regulat...

The full genome of a Methanomassiliicoccales strain, U3.2.1, was obtained from enrichment cultures of percolation fen peat soil under methanogenic conditions, with methanol and hydrogen as the electron acceptor and donor, respectively. Metagenomic assembly of combined long-read and short-read sequences resulted in a 1.51-Mbp circular genome.

Global warming increases soil temperatures and promotes faster growth and turnover of soil microbial communities. As microbial cell walls contain a high proportion of organic nitrogen, a higher turnover rate of microbes should also be reflected in an accelerated organic nitrogen cycling in soil. We used a metatranscriptomics and metagenomics approa...

Trophic interactions are crucial for carbon cycling in food webs. Traditionally, eukaryotic micropredators are considered the major micropredators of bacteria in soils, although bacteria like myxobacteria and Bdellovibrio are also known bacterivores. Until recently, it was impossible to assess the abundance of prokaryotes and eukaryotes in soil foo...

Microbial physiological responses to long-term warming are poorly understood. Here we applied metatranscriptomics to investigate how microorganisms react to medium-term (8 years) and long-term (>5 decades) subarctic grassland soil warming of +6 °C. Decades, but not years, of warming induced changes in relative abundances of eukaryotic, prokaryotic,...

How soil microorganisms respond to global warming is key to infer future soil-climate feedbacks, yet poorly understood. Here we applied metatranscriptomics to investigate microbial physiological responses to medium- (8 years) and long-term (>50 years) subarctic grassland soil warming of +6 °C. Besides indications for a community-wide upregulation o...

A short movie created for the forskningsdagene 2019 in Tromsø introducing different types of microbes and their role in the gut/rumen https://en.uit.no/forskning/forskningsgrupper/sub?p_document_id=341073&sub_id=674675

Research on methanogenic Archaea has experienced a revival, with many novel lineages of methanogens recently being found through cultivation and suggested via metagenomics approaches, respectively. Most of these lineages comprise Archaea (potentially) capable of methanogenesis from methylated compounds, a pathway that had previously received compar...

High-organic drained peatlands are large sources of the greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide. Rewetting of peatlands is a promising strategy to protect the large C stocks, however, rewetting also causes increased emissions of the potent GHG methane. The net climate effect of rewetting and the role of the microbiome remains uncertain. We aimed at inv...

Ruminant livestock is a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane. The complex rumen microbiome, consisting of bacteria, archaea, and microbial eukaryotes, facilitates anaerobic plant biomass degradation in the cow rumen, leading to methane emissions. Using an integrated approach combining multidomain quantitative metatranscriptomics with g...

Trophic interactions in the microbial food web of soils are crucial for nutrient and carbon cycling. Traditionally, protozoa are considered the major micropredators of bacteria in soil. However, some prokaryotes, such as Myxobacteria and Bdellovibrio are also famous for bacterivorous life style. Until recently, it was impossible to assess the abund...

Background Ruminant livestock is a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane (CH 4 ), produced by the complex rumen microbiome. Using an integrated approach, combining quantitative metatranscriptomics with gas- and volatile fatty acid (VFA) profiling, we gained fundamental insights into temporal dynamics of the cow rumen microbiome during f...

Importance: Cellular membranes of members of all three domains of life, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya, are largely formed by lipids in which glycerol serves as backbone for the hydrophobic alkyl chains. Recently, however, archaeal tetraether lipids with either butanetriol or pentanetriol as backbone were identified in marine sediments and attribu...

Methanogenic Thermoplasmata of the novel order Methanomassiliicoccales were recently discovered in human and animal gastro-intestinal tracts (GITs). However their distribution in other methanogenic environments has not been addressed systematically. Here we surveyed Methanomassiliicoccales presence in wetland soils, a globally important source of m...